One fundamental concern was that the SS might accidentally(ish) shoot a protester. They wanted immunity from prosecution for any little accidents (like causing a bloodbath on the scale of the Peterloo Massacre), and the Metropolitan Police quite rightly pointed out that they are capable of a massiveoverreactionthemselves without any help from a bunch of upstart colonials;-)
Where am I?
This page will create real-time maps of where your IP address is located in the map. It will let you create your own poster sized maps that you can print or use for your desktop, etc.
You're reading it wrong. The patent refers to a method for allowing a user to customise the content of a page returned by a web server, through the use of a configuration page. Although the illustrative description of the patent refers to the use of cookies to identify the user, this is no more a "patent on cookies" than it is a patent on computers, networks, the Internet or any of the other technologies referred to as being involved in the process decribed.
Of course, it's still laughable to suggest that this should be granted. Anybody got prior art on the use of cookies to allow the punters to customise a page, details of such customisation being held on the server? Note that, as somebody has pointed out, this is a continuation of a patent granted in 2002, which was in turn a continuation of a patent aplication made in 1996.
To make the puzzle unsolvable, you would have to change the stickers around
Not correct. If you disassemble a cube and reassemble it in a random order, you only have a 1 in 12 chance of that cube being solvable. See Why must the cube be reassembled correctly? for details.
Umm... which part of "used to have" did you not understand? I agree with you that UK students have a crap deal; I was suggesting that they should be angry that they have been brought to this pitch by politicians denying them the very benefits from which those same politicians benefited when young.
I know knocking students for the supposed "easy ride" they have has been a national sport here for years, but I'm not joining in; such attitudes are as ignorant and old-fashioned as a Jim Davidson joke. I hope that, despite the lousy way the state is treating you while you are studying, you still manage to have as good a time as I did at Uni:-)
Or you could just register the copyright and use the existing institution
Excellent advice, but it doesn't work for those of us outside the US. Here in the UK (and AFAIK the rest of the EU) copyright resides with the creator, but there is no place of registration.
The registration road is one that the US followed many years ago, and it provides an excellent degree of legal protection. But the history of copyright law in the UK has tended towards an "If you wrote it then it's yours, now can you prove it?" model, and proving it is a difficult thing to do nowadays if you publish an original work on the net.
Here we have no national registry of claims of copyright as a matter of public record. Maybe the EU should move towards this model (although I deeply distrust any approach that would actually require registration).
Of course registering every cvs checkin is going to get expensive:)
Hmm... strictly speaking, every copyrighted work should be deposited with the Briitish Library, Bodleian Library (Oxford), Cambridge University Library, National Library of Scotland, Library of Trinity College Dublin and the National Library of Wales. Hope their CVS servers are up to scratch;-)
True. I suppose it comes down to the amount of education on which the country is willing to spend its money.
Drifting wildly off topic, I think the fundamental problem is that education used to be regarded as an unmitigatedly good thing, for both the individual and the nation. A certain PM of the 80s managed to spread the pernicious idea, also (according to Hunter S Thompson) espoused by the Hell's Angels, that "What's 'good' is what's good for me." So people are prepared to pay more for their own children to benefit, but are damned if they are going to pay taxes to benefit society as a whole.
The question is, is it actually beneficial to society as a whole to have an educated population, or are we, the chosen, going to make the proles jump through hoops and sing for their supper if they want a chance of a better life?
<Rampant_Idealism>
I speak as somebody who went to an excellent school courtesy of the eleven plus, then studied at university with a (partial) grant and tuition fees paid. I appreciate that the "academic/factory" perception of child aptitude embodied in the eleven plus was itself fundamentally flawed, but I still think that one way or another, people should be entitled to the same opportunities for personal improvement that I had. (And I strongly believe that education should be about improvement for its own sake, not advancement for the bank's sake.)
</Rampant_Idealism>
On the contrary, you should be complaining like hell that you no longer have:
Tuition fees paid by the State;
A grant to cover basic living expenses while studying - including books and other materials;
The right to claim State benefits during University vacations (if you're not working).
Every member of the UK Government (and ageing peasants like me) who has a degree had those benefits to allow them to achieve a higher standard of education. Why roll over and let them take that away from you?
Usually it's to do with different publishers having the right to distribute the work in different areas.
A lot of my (second-hand) books published in the 40s/50s/60s have something along the lines of "Not for sale in the USA/Canada/Australia & New Zealand/South Africa" (pick any combination). Since the publishing industry became more globalised, publishers are more likely to secure the distribution rights in all areas, so this is dying away somewhat, at least in the world of popular reading. Publishers of technical works, particularly if they are in translation, are more likely to have to do this still, what with Penguin not issuing many works in the field of structural engineering (or whatever).
Within the EU, books are subject to VAT at a reduced rate, which in the UK is 0%. I'm not certain, but I thought import duty was intended to make up the amount lost by VAT not having been charged, which would imply that books would not be subject to import duty.
OTOH, given the ways of HM Customs & Excise, I wouldn't be surprised if they don't try to screw it out of people anyway.
The Concorde is a beautiful thing, both aesthetically pleasing and impressive in its use of (for the time) advanced technology. It's a shame to see it go, even if the likes of me couldn't afford it.
I don't know which is more impressive: that it was done with slide rules, or that the English and French stopped squabbling long enough to agree on which units of measurement to use:-)
Way back in the early days of/. it basically ran on a machine in Rob Malda's bedroom.
The part of a URL preceding the domain name is (in principle) a machine identifier within that domain. Thus your web server would be "www.example.com", your SMTP server "smtp.example.com", the machine on Dilbert's desk would be "dilbert.example.com" and so on.
So presumably, with only one machine in the slashdot.org domain, Rob regarded the "www" as redundant.
OTOH, given the answer to this FAQ, maybe it was just to cause confusion.
(Anybody else remember the day when the front page said "Sorry there's been no new stories posted in the last 24 hours, I've been taking my last two exams"?)
See my reply to the post above. Your parents were probably like mine - when told the VHF service was ending, they chucked out the old set and bought a new one. It was only a few troublemakers who ended up being paid off with UHF sets.
I should have made it clearer that the problem was that they wanted to turn off the VHF broadcast system. My only reference for the story is an article in the print edition of The Guardian, some time in the last year or so, concerning the timetable for takeup of digital television.
There was no sweeping operation to offer sets to all and sundry. A few diehards threatened to take legal action to prevent the turning off of VHF transmissions, on the grounds that they'd paid the licence fee and their VHF sets still worked. The Beeb settled with them by giving them new UHF sets, which was much cheaper than fighting a drawn-out legal battle over the terms of their Royal Charter. There were only a few thousand, or possibly just a few hundred, curmudgeons who benefited from this. The Beeb were obviously not going to publicise it (to keep numbers down), and still won't, in case people start pulling the same stunt when analogue TV is turned off in a few years.
There's some useful information (and excellent photos) at Northlight Images, including a pretty extensive collection of links, and good advice on setting up colour profiles so as to get consistent image representation on the journey from camera through monitor to printer, particularly for black and white photography.
Slashdot Mirror
One fundamental concern was that the SS might accidentally(ish) shoot a protester. They wanted immunity from prosecution for any little accidents (like causing a bloodbath on the scale of the Peterloo Massacre), and the Metropolitan Police quite rightly pointed out that they are capable of a massive overreaction themselves without any help from a bunch of upstart colonials ;-)
I really don't see the Palace agreeing to that, although it should be a laugh when she nods to Bush and asks "And what do you do?"
Somebody had better warn him not to try to shake hands with her either, unless he wants a Coldstream Guardsman's bayonet up his arse.
Something like this, perhaps :-)
Actually, we don't have software patents over here :-)
It's in the pipeline:
Honesty is clearly not the best policy if you want to join the police.
Ah, but we make fun of our royal family (in the UK, at least), so we're still ahead :-)
You're reading it wrong. The patent refers to a method for allowing a user to customise the content of a page returned by a web server, through the use of a configuration page. Although the illustrative description of the patent refers to the use of cookies to identify the user, this is no more a "patent on cookies" than it is a patent on computers, networks, the Internet or any of the other technologies referred to as being involved in the process decribed.
Of course, it's still laughable to suggest that this should be granted. Anybody got prior art on the use of cookies to allow the punters to customise a page, details of such customisation being held on the server? Note that, as somebody has pointed out, this is a continuation of a patent granted in 2002, which was in turn a continuation of a patent aplication made in 1996.
They left the drawings in the bathroom, and somebody used them to improve peri-anal hygiene.
Not correct. If you disassemble a cube and reassemble it in a random order, you only have a 1 in 12 chance of that cube being solvable. See Why must the cube be reassembled correctly? for details.
Quite a while...
Not if this law makes it onto the statute books.
Something gives me the impression they haven't really thought this one through... :-)
Umm... which part of "used to have" did you not understand? I agree with you that UK students have a crap deal; I was suggesting that they should be angry that they have been brought to this pitch by politicians denying them the very benefits from which those same politicians benefited when young.
I know knocking students for the supposed "easy ride" they have has been a national sport here for years, but I'm not joining in; such attitudes are as ignorant and old-fashioned as a Jim Davidson joke. I hope that, despite the lousy way the state is treating you while you are studying, you still manage to have as good a time as I did at Uni :-)
Excellent advice, but it doesn't work for those of us outside the US. Here in the UK (and AFAIK the rest of the EU) copyright resides with the creator, but there is no place of registration.
The registration road is one that the US followed many years ago, and it provides an excellent degree of legal protection. But the history of copyright law in the UK has tended towards an "If you wrote it then it's yours, now can you prove it?" model, and proving it is a difficult thing to do nowadays if you publish an original work on the net.
Here we have no national registry of claims of copyright as a matter of public record. Maybe the EU should move towards this model (although I deeply distrust any approach that would actually require registration).
Hmm... strictly speaking, every copyrighted work should be deposited with the Briitish Library, Bodleian Library (Oxford), Cambridge University Library, National Library of Scotland, Library of Trinity College Dublin and the National Library of Wales. Hope their CVS servers are up to scratch ;-)
True. I suppose it comes down to the amount of education on which the country is willing to spend its money.
Drifting wildly off topic, I think the fundamental problem is that education used to be regarded as an unmitigatedly good thing, for both the individual and the nation. A certain PM of the 80s managed to spread the pernicious idea, also (according to Hunter S Thompson) espoused by the Hell's Angels, that "What's 'good' is what's good for me." So people are prepared to pay more for their own children to benefit, but are damned if they are going to pay taxes to benefit society as a whole.
The question is, is it actually beneficial to society as a whole to have an educated population, or are we, the chosen, going to make the proles jump through hoops and sing for their supper if they want a chance of a better life?
<Rampant_Idealism>
I speak as somebody who went to an excellent school courtesy of the eleven plus, then studied at university with a (partial) grant and tuition fees paid. I appreciate that the "academic/factory" perception of child aptitude embodied in the eleven plus was itself fundamentally flawed, but I still think that one way or another, people should be entitled to the same opportunities for personal improvement that I had. (And I strongly believe that education should be about improvement for its own sake, not advancement for the bank's sake.)
</Rampant_Idealism>
On the contrary, you should be complaining like hell that you no longer have:
Every member of the UK Government (and ageing peasants like me) who has a degree had those benefits to allow them to achieve a higher standard of education. Why roll over and let them take that away from you?
Usually it's to do with different publishers having the right to distribute the work in different areas.
A lot of my (second-hand) books published in the 40s/50s/60s have something along the lines of "Not for sale in the USA/Canada/Australia & New Zealand/South Africa" (pick any combination). Since the publishing industry became more globalised, publishers are more likely to secure the distribution rights in all areas, so this is dying away somewhat, at least in the world of popular reading. Publishers of technical works, particularly if they are in translation, are more likely to have to do this still, what with Penguin not issuing many works in the field of structural engineering (or whatever).
In the 80s I usually heard it called the Greengrocers' apostrophe: Cabbage's, Carrot's, Turnip's et al.
A local fish & chip shop has a notice:
I'm not sure if they're being sarcastic, as well as ungrammatical.Within the EU, books are subject to VAT at a reduced rate, which in the UK is 0%. I'm not certain, but I thought import duty was intended to make up the amount lost by VAT not having been charged, which would imply that books would not be subject to import duty.
OTOH, given the ways of HM Customs & Excise, I wouldn't be surprised if they don't try to screw it out of people anyway.
Hmm, rounding errors in unit conversion multiplied by rounding errors in using a slide rule... it's amazing it flew at all :-)
The Concorde is a beautiful thing, both aesthetically pleasing and impressive in its use of (for the time) advanced technology. It's a shame to see it go, even if the likes of me couldn't afford it.
I don't know which is more impressive: that it was done with slide rules, or that the English and French stopped squabbling long enough to agree on which units of measurement to use :-)
Way back in the early days of /. it basically ran on a machine in Rob Malda's bedroom.
The part of a URL preceding the domain name is (in principle) a machine identifier within that domain. Thus your web server would be "www.example.com", your SMTP server "smtp.example.com", the machine on Dilbert's desk would be "dilbert.example.com" and so on.
So presumably, with only one machine in the slashdot.org domain, Rob regarded the "www" as redundant.
OTOH, given the answer to this FAQ, maybe it was just to cause confusion.
(Anybody else remember the day when the front page said "Sorry there's been no new stories posted in the last 24 hours, I've been taking my last two exams"?)
See my reply to the post above. Your parents were probably like mine - when told the VHF service was ending, they chucked out the old set and bought a new one. It was only a few troublemakers who ended up being paid off with UHF sets.
I should have made it clearer that the problem was that they wanted to turn off the VHF broadcast system. My only reference for the story is an article in the print edition of The Guardian, some time in the last year or so, concerning the timetable for takeup of digital television.
There was no sweeping operation to offer sets to all and sundry. A few diehards threatened to take legal action to prevent the turning off of VHF transmissions, on the grounds that they'd paid the licence fee and their VHF sets still worked. The Beeb settled with them by giving them new UHF sets, which was much cheaper than fighting a drawn-out legal battle over the terms of their Royal Charter. There were only a few thousand, or possibly just a few hundred, curmudgeons who benefited from this. The Beeb were obviously not going to publicise it (to keep numbers down), and still won't, in case people start pulling the same stunt when analogue TV is turned off in a few years.
There's some useful information (and excellent photos) at Northlight Images, including a pretty extensive collection of links, and good advice on setting up colour profiles so as to get consistent image representation on the journey from camera through monitor to printer, particularly for black and white photography.